Perhaps the most widespread
limitation on the administrative
process results when participants
define administration as office-
holding rather than an essential
ingredient in organizational
accomplishment. -- James D. Thompson, Organizations in Action

This consideration of new public administration will conclude with a consideration of two very general questions.
First, what will public administration be like in the coming
decade and in the coming generation? Second, what should
public administration be like in the coming decade and in the
coming generation? Although stated separately, these questions not only overlap but completely blend to become the
same question: What kind of a public administration will we
create for ourselves in the coming decade and in the coming
generation?

William G. Scott and David K. Hart in their remarkably
perceptive study, Organizational America, point out that the twentieth century has been the American century. Our
dominance in this century has resulted from high technology
and the perfection of organizational skills.1 Our increasingly
large and complex nation seems to have called forth large
and complex organizations to make it work. Our lives are
surrounded by those massive human-technical engines we
call organizations. How can we make those engines (our
engines) respond to the issues and problems of the 1980s?

If we are to meet these issues, we must recognize that
organizations function fundamentally in the realm of values.
The traditional values of public administration have served

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